


Necroprancer

by KivaEmber



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - No Metaverse (Persona 5), Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Crack Treated Seriously, Goro is a horseboy, M/M, Necromancy, Romantic Comedy, a murderous horseboy, akira the necromancer, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:00:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29493981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KivaEmber/pseuds/KivaEmber
Summary: Goro had checked and triple-checked the rules: there was nothing in there barring undead horses from competing, and black magic did not come under the doping section of ‘banned substances’.or;Goro's horse, Loki, dies just before the big dressage competition that he was determined to win. So, like any sane horse boy, he hires a necromancer to revive his dead horse and it... goes horribly wrong. At least the necromancer is cute.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 12
Kudos: 146





	Necroprancer

“This is a horse.”

Goro frowned at the consultant’s flat observation, looking up from Loki’s poor (and halfway rotting) corpse to give the necromancer a rather dubious look, “Well, yes, obviously.” 

The necromancer, one Akira Kurusu, made a face. He had a very cute face, half-hidden behind large-framed glasses and a wild bird’s nest of a hair, looking strangely normal for a violator of the natural order in his black, stylish jacket and blue scarf. The day was cold, a sharp chill on the air that stuck in the back of one’s throat, and not even necromancers were immune to it. 

“Normally, I deal with cats and dogs. Maybe the occasional goldfish,” Akira said carefully, scuffing the floor with the heel of his boot, “The horse is a first for me.”

Goro felt his heart sink, “So, you can’t do it?”

“Oh, I can,” Akira hastened to reassure, “I just, er, can’t promise what the end result would be?”

Goro mulled this over, his gaze wandering back to his horse. Loki, an appaloosa of a cob lineage, had been his companion for a few years now. So much time and training and  _ effort _ had been sunk into this horse in time for the upcoming dressage competition, and now fate and a half-blind hunter had intervened. Mistaking his horse in the field for a rogue stag, the asshole had unloaded a high powered hunting rifle into Loki’s head before realising his mistake. His horse hadn’t stood a chance. 

The sane response to such a tragedy would be to grieve the loss and move on - but the dressage competition was in less than  _ two weeks _ and Goro didn’t have time for sanity or grief. No, forget that.  _ Death _ was no obstacle to his success - if he could get a necromancer to sustain Loki’s corpse long enough to puppeteer him through a dressage competition, it should be fine. 

(Goro had checked and triple-checked the rules: there was nothing in there barring undead horses from competing, and black magic did not come under the doping section of ‘banned substances’)

“So long as he can perform dressage, I don’t care what the end result is,” Goro said solemnly, turning back to the necromancer, “How much?”

Akira cupped his chin, his gaze travelling from the dead horse to Goro, his expression contemplative. 

“... to be honest,” the necromancer said after a long pause, “I’m tempted to do it for free. This is going to be a disaster and I want to see how it plays out.” 

Goro frowned. 

“People kick up a fuss when you enter undead animals into competitions,” Akira clarified. 

“But it’s not against the rules,” Goro said. 

“Oh, it isn’t,” Akira agreed, “But people complain regardless. Pitchforks and torches get involved, sometimes, that’s always fun.”

Goro was unmoved, “I’m not afraid to shank people to defend my victory.”

“Jesus Christ,” Akira said, and shook his head, “Well, if you’re sure, I have a list of items I need to start the ritual.” 

The necromancer procured a shopping list on his phone, and it went something like this: a handful of daisies, a dash of ginger, a human heart, something that was redacted, and the corpse in question you wanted to reanimate. 

“Why the daisies and ginger?” Goro asked.

“Daisies for fortitude and ginger for strength,” Akira answered, “You need to fortify the horse’s spirit  _ and _ its body for the reanimation process. It’s, uh, kinda rough of them.” 

Goro eyed him suspiciously. 

“Body parts fall off,” Akira admitted guiltily, “Sometimes.” 

“Loki needs all four legs,” Goro said very severely. 

“I’ll use extra ginger,” Akira mumbled, and annotated that on his phone. 

Next was the human heart. Normally, such things were expensive and difficult to procure, as you had to deal with the black market for such things (or be willing to get your hands dirty). Akira only began to explain the potential avenues Goro could take to procure a heart when the rider waved him off with a “oh, I have one spare.” 

“You have one… spare,” Akira repeated. 

“Well, we’ll need to dig it up first,” Goro amended, and pointed towards the edge of his paddock, “Over there, the hunter that shot my horse. I buried him in a shallow grave. His heart should be sort of fresh.” 

Akira stared at him for a moment.

“You’re a little scary,” the necromancer finally said, “And I deal with demons on a daily basis.” 

“If this frightens you, then perhaps you should stick to reanimating dead pets,” Goro sneered, and started for the shallow grave, “Come on. Help me dig this trash up.” 

Thirty minutes later, under the light of day, they dug up another corpse. Goro used the sharp end of his shovel to extract the heart, making a mess of things everywhere and splattering his face and the front of his jacket with congealed blood. The hunter was then reburied - in pieces. 

“There,” Goro said, and held out the not-quite-fresh heart, “How’s this?”

“Normally…” Akira began slowly, still looking like he couldn’t quite believe what was unfolding before his eyes, “It needs to be, uh…”

They looked down at the heart. It was greyish and smelled like… yeah. 

“Not rotting,” Akira finished. 

“But you can still use it, right?” Goro asked shrewdly, “If not, I suppose I can thin out my competition a little by luring them to-”

“This heart’s fine,” Akira said, not in the mood to become a potential accessory to murder this early in the morning, “I’ll just use  _ a lot _ of ginger.” 

“Hm,” Goro said, “Are you sure? It would be no trouble to-”

“I’m sure,” Akira said, very firmly, “Very, very sure.” 

“Well, alright,” Goro muttered, and stalked back to his dead horse with a low grumble of; “Spoilsport.” 

* * *

The ritual was done at midnight, because of course it was, and Goro thought the whole thing was very anticlimactic. Rifts didn’t split open the sky, demons or ghouls didn’t come screeching out of the void, blood didn’t ooze from the ground - no, Akira simply sprinkled a runed circle around Loki’s corpse in coloured chalk (pink), tossed the rotting heart, the daisies and a whole duffel bag full of ginger on top, and topped it off with-

“Is that porn?” Goro asked, watching as Akira gingerly balanced the small stack of ‘COWBOYS GONE WILD’ porno magazines on top of the ginger duffel bag. 

“It’s my bribe,” Akira explained, which explained nothing at all, “But okay, we’re set.”

Then a few words in some alien language, Akira waved his arms about, sliced both his and Goro’s wrists open (that was a little interesting), and after asking something called ‘Arsene’ to please revive his dead horse  _ (“bring him back or I’ll climb down into hell to kick your shit in,” _ Goro had said, much to Akira’s consternation), there was a flash of bright, burning light, fire, some weird hallucinogenic wobbling colours and- 

A horse whinnied. 

“Loki!” Goro gasped happily, waving the smoke aside to see… Loki standing, alive once more. 

Yes, Loki was standing… 

...on two legs. 

“Erm,” Akira said in the congealed silence that befall upon them, “Well. Hm.  _ Hmmm, _ that’s. Not normal.” 

“What the shit,” Goro said, staring at his horse (?), “What am I looking at.” 

Loki, as mentioned before, had been a cobbish appaloosa. This Loki was a two-legged zebraman with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, empty eye sockets, and tiny t-rex arms tipped with blood red claws. His fingers were especially creepy, twitching and flexing, his head blindly tossing about as his hoof pawed the ground. 

This was not a horse.

“It seems, uh…” Akira took out his phone, scrolling through his ritual guide, “Hmm, I think I might’ve overdid the ginger.” 

“He’s a zebra,”Goro said blankly, watching as Loki ambled about, snorting and gnashing his fangs at nothing, “A zebraman.” 

“Zebra  _ demon, _ actually,” Akira corrected, and wilted when Goro turned to glare at him, “Um, technically…”

“Fix it,” Goro gritted out. 

“Uhhhh, hahaha, well,” Akira coughed, “That might be… impossible?”

“What.” 

“I mean, a demon’s claimed the body now. It can no longer be revived to its original state,” Akira explained, holding his hands up in surrender as Goro hissed, low and viciously, at him, “Sooooo, yeah! No retries.”

Goro cursed and turned back to Loki, except- “What- where the hell did he go?”

They looked around, bewildered at how a seven foot tall Zebraman could move so fast, so silently - and eventually relocated him at the shallow grave on the edge of the paddock when they heard the unmistakable wet, grisly noises of something eating into not-quite-fresh meat. 

“Ah, he’s a maneater,” Akira commented as they both stood there and watched Loki devour the evidence of Goro’s wrongdoings, “Hmmm.” 

“At least I don’t have to worry about the dead body anymore,” Goro mused, rubbing the back of his neck.

“...well, that’s my job done,” Akira started, only to yelp when Goro fisted the back of his jacket in a white-knuckled grip,  _ “Erk!” _

“And where…” Goro purred, his voice low and velvety, “Do you think  _ you’re _ going, Mr. Necromancer?”

“H-Home?”

“Nuh uh,” Goro pulled Akira in close, his smile bearing teeth, “You’re not going  _ anywhere _ until you find a solution to this.”

“I  _ told _ you-” Akira squeaked when Goro’s fingernails dug right into the side of his neck, feeling his forefinger press especially hard against his carotid artery, “I’ll be happy to help!”

“Good boy~” Goro crooned, then roughly released him, “You try to run, and I’ll sick my horse on you.”

“Uh huh…” Akira sighed heavily, rubbing at his neck, “I knew this was going to be a disaster.” 

(and of course, things only got worse from there) 

**Author's Note:**

> this is just crack pls do not expect anything serious to come out of this fhdhhs
> 
> the idea spawned from a tumblr post ages ago about if only someone made a horse girl film with the plot of the girl reviving her undead horse for a race and calling it necroprancer


End file.
